


May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor

by Almost_Artistic



Series: The Culling Games [3]
Category: Homestuck, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Crack Pairings, Damara's Mouth, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, Fetishized Celebrities, Forced Marriage, Forced Pregnancy, Grief/Mourning, Implied Incest/Clonecest, Karkat Swearing, Kurloz Being Kurloz, Lab Sex, Mature!Kankri, Medical Experimentation, Medicinal Drug Use, Mental Health Issues, Multi, Mutant Hate, No really you guys fight scenes are hard, Original Troll Characters, Over-Sexualized Characters, Quadrant Confusion, Suicidal Thoughts, The power of friendship, Too Many Fight Scenes, crossover (sort of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-03
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-03-05 04:01:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3104825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Almost_Artistic/pseuds/Almost_Artistic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Let the Games begin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last, update one of part two is here! I must again apologize for the long delay; real life got ugly for a while here, but things are starting to look a little better. Updates will continue to be slow, as I'm trying to graduate from my Masters' program, but updates there shall be. ^_^

**Terezi: Take Cover**

As soon as the starting gun fires, the town square erupts into motion, most of the tributes charging toward the pile of goods and weapons. You look around for Karkat just in time to see him go tearing off in the opposite direction. The blueblood girl, Teluca, starts to run after him.

You stumble down from your platform. No one is paying attention to you. The concrete under your heels is cracked. You drop down and scrabble at it with your fingers until you manage to free a hefty chunk, then fling it as hard as you can in Teluca’s direction.

The debris connects with the back of her knee, knocking her off balance. Karkat disappears around the corner, out of her line of sight, and you feel a mixture of relief and fear. On the one hand, Little Miss Psychopath won’t be able to find him as easily now. On the other, he has no food, no water, and no weapons.

The boom of the death-toll cannon startles you. You knew in theory that some of the tributes usually died scuffling over supplies within the first few minutes of the Games, but the reality is far more disturbing than any of the reruns you ever saw on T.V. There’s a boy with the back of his head bashed in lying crumpled over one of the packs. You watch as the girl from District Six casually nudges his body aside with the toe of her boot and takes the pack he’d fallen on top of. Not far from them lies a boy with his neck snapped, eyes still open, and on the other side of the supply pile, a girl with something sharp sticking out from between her ribs. Your eyes go blurry.

Someone is running at you. Two someones. And you are standing there stock still like an idiot.

Something bulky goes _whumph_ as it connects with your stomach. Instinctively, you grab onto it, just as two pairs of hands grab onto you and start pulling you backwards.

“The swift feline makes a daring rescue of the wise, noble dragon!” says a familiar voice. “And the wise, noble dragon needs to _move her feet_!”

You look down at the thing you’re holding. It’s a supply pack. You are holding a supply pack and you have Nepeta on one side and Tavros on the other, both of them trying to hustle you away from the free-for-all.

“I’ll remind you that the wise, noble dragon has talons, not feet,” you say weakly, and follow them out of the square at a run.

Your arena appears to be built in the style of an abandoned ghost town. You streamed enough post-apocalyptic movies online with Sollux to know the setting when you see it, everything dusty and gray and decaying to urban grunge. You sort of wonder if there will be zombies.

Nepeta leads you and Tavros down a row of storefronts, eyes always moving, watchful. You don’t mind letting her lead; she’s a highly skilled huntress, and she has the highest threat level out of the three of you.

“In here,” she says, opening one of the abandoned shop’s doors. She tears a few buttons off of her jacket and arranges them in a diamond outside the door, then hurries you into the shop.

“Um,” says Tavros. “The buttons. What, uh, were they for?”

“I told Equius I’d leave him a sign if we got split up,” Nepeta says.

Tavros looks uncomfortable.

“Um…not to say, uh, that, I don’t think your moirail, is, trustworthy, but—”

“He may seem like a clawful stickler about the hemospectrum, but I purrmise he’s not going to hurt you.”

“Um. Okay.”

You look around the shop. It seems you’ve lucked your way into a pharmacy. The others notice at the same time you do. Nepeta pulls a bottle of generic cold medicine down off a shelf and tears it open with a claw to see if there are capsules inside. There are.

“Think the pills are real?” she asks.

“I, don’t think we, should, um, count on that,” Tavros says.

“Knowing our luck, they’re all cyanide capsules,” you mutter. “But the gauze is real, at least. So that’s decent luck.”

“So, uh. What do we do now?”

Nepeta sits down behind the counter. You and Tavros follow suit.

“We keep away from windows, fur sure,” she says. “I guess we might as well camp here.”

“We should see what we’ve got in our packs,” you say, dumping yours in the center of your little circle.

“Good idea,” Nepeta agrees.

You have a fair haul between the three of you; limited rations, three bottles of drinking water, a first aid kit, two thermal blankets, a flashlight, a pen knife, a bag of nails, a nightstick, a spool of fishing line, and a roll of duct tape.

“We’ll have to be careful with the water and the rations,” Nepeta says. “But we should be able to last fur a while.”

“We should set traps,” you say. You reach for the fishing line and the nails. “Here, look.” You unspool a long strand of invisible thread and cut it with the pen knife, then crawl out from behind the counters. Using the most complex knots you know, you tie each end of the fishing line to a nail and push the nails into the wall on either side of the door, stretching the thread taught across the entryway.

“Ta-da! Instant trip-wire!”

Nepeta beams.

“The wise, noble dragon is clever!”

“And, um, sneaky,” Tavros adds, but he’s smiling, too.

You gather up a handful of pill bottles and shake them. They make a satisfyingly loud rattling sound. You cut another piece of fishing line and tie the bottles together, then hang them on the door.

“And now we’ll hear it if anybody tries to open that.”

Outside, the cannon booms again. All of you flinch.

 _‘Not Karkat,’_ you think, _‘Please not Karkat, please not Karkat…’_

“They’ll announce the names of the…the um…they’ll announce names tonight,” Tavros mutters, and you know he means the names of the dead, even if he can’t make himself say the words. You suppose you can’t blame him.

There’s little else to do now but wait.

**Karkat: Work With It**

You don’t know how long you’ve been running. A long-ass time, if the burn in your legs and lungs is anything to go by.

The arena unsettles you. It reminds you of the town surrounding your childhood lawnring, if the town went straight to rusty, post-apocalyptic hell rather than just no-one-has-money-to-fix-anything hell. But the layout is eerily similar: the town square, the shopping district, the industrial district you’re running through now, the lighthouse off in the distance.

It wasn’t what you were expecting, but you can work with it.

You let yourself slow to a jog, then a quick walk, checking your surroundings. You’re alone, so far as you can tell. You hope to holy fucking hell that nobody got their hands on a pair of binoculars and had the sense to book it to the lighthouse. Unless it was Terezi or Gamzee, maybe.

At the thought of your friends, your already overtaxed bloodpusher tries to quit on you. You wonder if they’re safe, if they’re hiding or fighting, if they have food and water, if any of them are already…already…

You can’t go there, so you don’t. Instead, you duck into a nearby warehouse.

You do a quick search to make sure no one else has already claimed this space as their own and decide it’ll do for a quick rest. You don’t plan to stay for long; if you’ve learned anything in your years of professional vagabond-hood, it’s to never stay put for more than a little while. The more you move, the harder you are to find.

The space is too big for you to feel terribly comfortable in it, an open floor plan interrupted only by a few pieces of heavy machinery. You’re not sure if any of them are functional or if they’re just set pieces. Maybe you’ll test them out later. If they do work, they might prove useful.

You hunker down in a corner facing as many exits and points of entry as you can. That’s when it occurs to you that you’re tired, thirsty, and without any provisions whatsoever. Admittedly, you’ve been in this position before, but that doesn’t make it any more pleasant to deal with. Hunger you can cope with. You’re used to being hungry. Same with tiredness. Thirst is a slightly more pressing issue. You can make it maybe a couple of days without water, but you sure as hell won’t be in any kind of fighting condition.

Waiting is a boring game. You play tic-tac-toe in the dust, count and recount the doors and windows, measure the perimeter in your head, mentally hum every song you know until you’re left empty of material save the thoughts in your head as the virtual sun outside begins to go down.

You are so tired.

You doze.

You dream.

You wake gasping for breath and clawing at your old burn scars, itching with phantom pain. You lean back against the wall, chest rising and falling too fast, stale sweat drying on your face. You mop it away with the sleeve of your jacket and tell yourself to calm the fuck down. You can’t be in panic mode on day one; it’ll suck the energy straight out of you, and you’re going to need energy if you want to survive this thing.

After a moment, you realize what woke you. Outside, it’s dark, and the last strains of the Imperial anthem are winding down, piped into the arena for all to hear.

“And now, the names of the dead,” a female voice says, calm and professional. It’s a strange juxtaposition with the god-like echo of her voice. You hug your knees to your chest and pray to the nothing you believe in, _‘Not my friends, not my friends, please, god, not my friends…’_

“From District Eight: Azrain Sadena and Kuroan Gabrie. From District Ten: Kadota Pavian. From District Eleven: Gaddin Cetani. From District Twelve: Tesnii Maenad. Nineteen tributes remain. This concludes today’s announcements.”

The anthem plays again. You think you sob, or maybe it was a laugh.

“Thank you, sweet baby jesus,” you whisper. You lean your head back against the concrete wall, breathing. “Thank fuck.”

Relief makes you feel heavy, makes your eyelids droop with exhaustion as your body lets go of the wakeful tension of worry. You give into the temptation to close your eyes for just a moment.

When you open them again, dawn is breaking.

 

**Terezi: Welcome Newcomers**

You’ve all been sleeping in shifts, two at a time bundled up in sleeping bags behind the counter, one awake and watching the doors and windows. So far, your biggest problems have been boredom and your steadily dwindling water and food supplies. You’ve built an entire city out of storage containers and played more games of pillbox jenga than is probably healthy for three young trolls. You’ve rationed out the food as fairly as you could, parceling it evenly between the three of you in tiny amounts. You have to exercise self-control every time it’s your turn to keep watch, because you’re starting to get hungry enough to consider stealing a share that isn’t yours. Your blood color ensured that you were given a more-than-decent allowance, so you rarely wanted for food. Constant hunger is new to you, and very unpleasant, you might add.

It’s your watch and you’re eyeing the rations when the rattle of your pill bottle trap snaps your attention to the door. You reach for the nightstick and hiss at Nepeta and Tavros to wake up before you duck behind the counter.

The door swings open. There’s a loud crash and a quiet, “Oomph,” and then a very familiar laugh.

“And that’s why I let you go first.”

“Oh, no,” Tavros whispers.

Nepeta bolts around the counter before you can caution her to stop.

“Moirail pounce!” she declares, leaping on top of the fallen troll. You sigh and straighten up, still holding tightly to your nightstick.

Vriska steps over Equius and shuts the door behind her, grinning as she looks around.

“Nice digs you kids got here,” she says. “You don’t mind if we crash the slumber party, do you?”

You press your mouth into a thin line and say nothing.

“Um,” says Tavros.

“Safety in numbers!” Nepeta declares, and for a brief moment, you curse her friendliness. Equius untangles your broken tripwire from around his feet and looks her over.

“Are you harmed?”

“Nah. Just hungry.”

“Weeeeeeell,” Vriska pipes up. “We brought some pilfered chow. We might even share.”

Equius rights himself and glares down at her.

“As your superior, I command you to share your bounty with myself and Nepeta.”

“Pfff. I’m sorry, who’s superior here? I think that would be the girl ranked an eight. What was yours again, strong-boy?”

Equius begins to sweat. You have no patience for their pissing contest.

“Vriska,” you snap. “Share the food or beat it.”

“Ooh, ultimatums from the peanut gallery. I’m trembling.”

You march up to her and tear the pack out of her hands, rifling through it.

“Hey!”

You pull out four protein bars, toss one to Tavros, one to Nepeta, one to Equius, and keep the last for yourself. Then you drop the bag in your shelter behind the counters.

“I’m confiscating that until you can learn to behave.”

“Spoilsport.”

“You wanna stay, you’ve gotta pay. Tit for tat, Vriska. You taught me those rules, remember?”

Vriska looses a low hiss.

“And boy do I ever regret it,” she grumbles. “You’re no fun anymore, Pyrope.”

“I, uh. Think she’s fun.”

“Thank you, Tavros.”

“No one cares what you think, pupa.”

You smile at Tavros.

“I care what you think.”

“She’s only saying that to piss me off. Don’t listen to her.”

“Wow, someone sure does have an overinflated sense of self-importance. Last I checked, I had a kismesis, and it wasn’t you.”

Vriska makes an irritated clicking noise with her tongue. Before she can reply, Nepeta pipes up with, “We should all really get away from the windows.”

Thank god for common sense.

Equius and Vriska join your little huddle behind the counters, Equius nearly toppling your city of storage boxes as he sits down. Vriska deliberately topples your pile of pillboxes from your latest game of jenga. Bluh. Whatever. Nepeta curls up in Equius’s lap, butting her head under his chin in demand of head-scritches, which he grudgingly provides. Nepeta purrs. It’s a nice sound; it almost makes you forget where you are.

Vriska picks up your pen knife and tosses it from hand to hand, flipping it over her fingers. You don’t know why she feels the need to show off in front of the lot of you. You can’t believe you used to think she was cool.

“Soooooooo,” she says. “Anybody made any kills yet? Any daring escapes from the brink of death? No? You’re all boring wigglers? I’m shocked!”

You sigh.

“Is there a story you want to share, Vriska?”

Vriska grins, showing off her pointed incisors.

“So I’m prowling around for stragglers, right, figure there’s lots of low-ranking suckers left out there for easy pickins, and get this: this little idiot from District Twelve just trots right up to me, like she hasn’t even got the good sense to be scared, and she’s all like,” Vriska pauses to pitch her voice higher, breathier, “‘Um, uh, Vriska, you’re Vriska, right? You seem really smart and nice and awesome. Would you like to make an alliance with me?’”

“Yes, Vriska, I’m sure those were her exact words,” you grumble. “Especially the part about how nice you are.”

“Shut it, Pyrope. Anyway, I’m thinking, _can anyone be this stupid?_ So of course I’m like, ‘Sure, honey, whatcha got in your bag?’”

She pauses again to reach around your shoulder and snatch her pack, rifling through it.

“And what do you know, the twit pulls out _this_ little beauty.” She brandishes something silver in her hand, then flicks her wrist. You manage not to flinch as the point of the collapsible lance stops just inches from your sniffer. You see Tavros’s eyes widen with—hope, you think, and a lot of fear. Vriska grins at him before resuming her story.

“So I’m like, ‘Ooh, that’s a pretty thing, you know how to use it?’ And she’s all like, ‘No, but I don’t think it could be that hard.’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, no, it’s way harder than you think. Give it here and I’ll show you what I mean.’ And the stupid bitch just _hands it right over_.”

She laughs, long and mean. Equius scoots a few centimeters away from her, looking uncomfortable.

“I mean, she was just asking for it at that point,” Vriska continues. “So I take it and put it right through her chest, and she’s just gaping at me looking all betrayed, and—best part, wait for it—I go, ‘Huh. Guess it wasn’t so hard after all!’”

She grins and holds out her hands, like she’s waiting for cheers and applause. Tavros is pale, Nepeta’s face is, for once, unsmiling, and Equius won’t look at her. You say what everyone else is thinking.

“You’re despicable.”

Vriska’s smile turns to a sneer.

“No,” she says. “I’m a survivor. And you lot clearly don’t have the guts to get through these Games. Just count yourselves lucky you’ve got me on your side.”

Tavros fidgets.

“Like, that girl from District Twelve, had you on, her side?”

Vriska snarls.

“Shut up, Tavros.”

You open your mouth to say something, but you’re rudely interrupted by the front window exploding.

Someone makes a shrill noise (you, you realize a second later) and all of you duck low behind the counters as glass and bullets go flying over your heads. From the sound of things, someone outside has an automatic weapon. Not fucking fair.

“Is there a back door to this place?” Vriska demands.

“I don’t think so!” Nepeta answers.

Vriska snarls, tearing her fingers through her tangled hair.

“Trust you assholes to get us trapped in a box with no exit!”

You stay on your bellies behind the counters. The automatic weapon has stopped firing, and someone kicks the front door open.

“Jackpot!” you hear a boy call. “Five of ‘em in here!”

“Shit,” you hiss, throwing a glance around the counter.

An enormous boy with horns like crooked daggers is already inside, followed by a girl carrying a big-ass gun and a second boy who looks bored with the whole exercise.

“Hurry up and shoot if you’re going to, Atasha,” says the bored-looking boy. The girl circles around the counter, then looks directly at you and grins.

“Pyrope, right?” she says. Her hair is braided in two loose pigtails that hang cockeyed on either side of her head. She looks too young to have flecks of rust showing in her eyes.

You don’t see the point in denying it, so you lift your chin and say, “That’s right.”

Atasha makes a huffy little laughing sound.

“I don’t get it,” she says. “Why would a teal lower herself to fill a quadrant with a mutant?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” you snap. “Really? _Really_? You have a gun in my face and _that’s_ what you’re going to ask me?”

“Just shoot ‘em or let me smash some skulls,” the huge boy says.

“Sweet jesus, Caelan, do you go out of your way to sound like a Neandertroll?” the other boy asks him.

“Bluh, bluh, I’m Vidahl, I’m an olive so I think I’m better than my allies, but really, I’m just asking to get my face crushed in!”

Vidahl grins up at Caelan, his teeth piranha-sharp.

“Try me,” he says, very softly. “Go on.”

“No fighting!” Atasha says. “I’m having a conversation. It’s rude.”

Vidahl chuckles. Atasha shifts her gun, still looking at you like you’re a puzzle she can’t fit together.

“I guess it’s kind of romantic,” she concedes.

“Oh my god, are we _still_ talking about me and Karkat?”

“It would make a really dramatic movie,” Atasha goes on, obviously thinking out loud. “In Which A Determined Young Legislacerator Struggles With Her Flushed Inclinations Toward A Clearly-Beneath-Her-Caste Hemoanon Later Revealed To Be A Mutant—”

“Argh shut up what is even wrong with you?!”

Atasha looks genuinely hurt, like she can’t understand why you’re being so hostile.

“What?” she snaps. “I’m just trying to be accepting.”

“Atasha,” Caelan says. “For the love of god, just _shoot them already._ ”

“No, wait!” you say, changing tact. “I think that actually sounds like a great movie! Really! Just—just think of the dramatic tension!”

Atasha sighs, her expression growing wistful.

“Guess I was always sort of a sucker for forbidden love.”

You don’t miss the way her eyes flick toward Vidahl. Not for the first time, you wonder what in the fuck you’re doing here. Strip away the do-or-die setting and you’re all just a bunch of kids with friends and crushes and rivalries. Outside the Games, you could see yourself being friends with this girl.

“Why don’t you three form an alliance with us?” you suggest, and even you can hear the desperation in your voice. “We can talk about movies all you want! I bet you have lots of great ideas!”

For a moment, you think you’ve got her. Her mouth opens to answer.

There’s a sharp _snap_.

Atasha falls sideways with her neck broken. Vidahl steps to the side of the body, bored look still firmly in place. Caelan is gaping at him.

“What the fuck—”

“She was taking too long,” Vidahl says, examining his claws.

“So you just—you just—”

Vidahl looks up at Caelan, his green eyes gone sharp as highblood fangs.

“Yes,” he says. “I did. Adapt or be next.”

Vriska seizes their moment of hesitation to make her move. She vaults over the counters, lunging at Vidahl with lance in hand. He ducks easily under her clumsy jab, too close for the weapon to do any real damage.

When your eyes move back to Caelan, he’s picked up Atasha’s gun and pointed it straight at you.

You don’t quite know what to make of it when Tavros wraps his legs around you and squeezes so tight you think your ribs will crack.

You understand less than a second later when the bullets ricochet off his metal legs, spraying your attackers instead of you. In the background, you hear Vidahl swear. Caelan, meanwhile, makes no sound at all as he falls forward in a strangely graceful arc, his body riddled with bullets. You and Tavros scramble out of the way, Tavros uncoiling his legs from around you.

“Is he…?”

You grip his arm.

“Don’t think about it. Just move.”

Nepeta has the sense to take the gun off the body. You haul yourself to your feet, sweeping the front of the store, but there’s no sign of Vidahl. You look over at Vriska, leaning against the wall. She seems winded, but ultimately no worse for wear.

“Serket,” Equius snaps. “The other one. Where did he go?”

“Dunno,” Vriska says. “He doesn’t strike me as the retreating type, so he’s probably gone to get reinforcements. I suggest we get the fuck out of here.”

You think it’s the first time you’ve agreed with her on anything in sweeps.

Everyone scrambles for their packs, shoving things in haphazardly. You see Vriska take more rations than what should fairly be hers, but now isn’t the time to contest it. On a whim, you scoop up a handful of the meds you’d been using for pillbox jenga and stuff them into your bag, then follow the others out the front door in time with the two booms of the death-toll cannon.

As soon as you step outside, something silver whips past your face, so close it shaves a few strands of hair off your bangs. You turn to see an axe imbedded in the pharmacy door. You recognize the girl who threw it as Himara, one of the girls who gave Karkat a hard time your first day in training. She’s flanked on either side by Jasill and Vidahl. She grins at you. You grin back.

“What are you smiling for?” you ask her, prying the axe out of the door. “Now I have your weapon.”

Himara snorts.

“Yeah, and you don’t know how to use it. Go on, gator-face; gimme your best shot.”

You hold back a grimace. She’s right. The axe is bulky, nothing at all like the light blades you’re used to carrying, and your throwing skills were never spectacular.

Nepeta saves you from embarrassing yourself by hopping in front of your party.

“Hey, butt-faces!” she shouts. “I have a gun!”

The older trolls don’t seem daunted.

“That’s nice,” Jasill says, pulling something out of his pocket and fiddling with it. “But I have this.”

You don’t figure out what ‘this’ is until Vriska screams, “Grenade!” and you dive as far to your left as you can.

There’s deafening noise, then nothing but high-pitched ringing and searing heat. You feel yourself land, far away, a bad landing, paving stones scraping your palms and cheek, ripping your jacket, the knees of your pants. The world is bright white, and for a glorious moment, you think you’ve gone blind again. But then you see shapes starting to resolve through the fog. You push back the swell of disappointment, dragging yourself forward on hands and knees, trying to get your bearings. You look over your shoulder when you hear gunfire, but you can’t find the source. You do, however, get a glimpse of Equius strong-punching Vidahl to the ground.

“…up,” you hear in one ear, as if through a wad of cotton. “Get up!”

When you don’t obey fast enough, a pair of hands grabs you and hauls you to your feet, dragging you along at a pace you have trouble keeping up with. A second pair of hands steadies you, and the person dragging you—Vriska—gives an irritated grunt.

“Come _on_!”

You stagger along behind her. One of Tavros’s horns almost takes out your eye as you lean against him for support.

“Nepeta,” you manage. You hear your own voice as if you’re listening from underwater. “Equius—”

“Leave them,” Vriska says. “They can handle themselves.”

After one more glance over your shoulder, you follow Vriska and Tavros through the back-alleys and disappear into the maze of concrete.

 

**Sollux: Hide**

You split your time between the royals and the humans. You try to avoid being alone in your apartment at all costs, because if you’re alone, you’ll think about the images of the Games flickering on every screen in the Capitol, twenty-four hours a day, and you don’t want to think about that.

So you distract yourself. You snap your teeth at Eridan and swap fish puns with Feferi. You talk coding and traces and hacks with Roxy, who translates for the less computer-savvy humans, and you let Rose dictate the sort of info-net she wants you to set up, and you code and code and code until you are blissfully lost and sleepless.

You aren’t expecting it when Kanaya decides to meddle. But you know you probably should have been.

She comes to you with coffee and a pastry. You chug the coffee, pick at the pastry, and ask her why she’s here.

“I’ve just been worried about you,” she says. The girl honest-to-god wrings her hands. Only Kanaya could be so mother-henning, and, if she chose, in the next second slice you in half with a chainsaw.

“Nothing to worry about, KN,” you tell her. You finish the coffee in a few brief swigs and turn back to your monitor.

“Are you just going to ignore the Games, then?”

You tense.

“Yeah, that was actually sort of the plan.”

There’s silence save for the clicking of your keyboard. It stretches out long enough that you think perhaps you scared her away.

No such luck, apparently.

“Our friends are out there.”

You stop typing as a hard knot forms in your throat. You lower your hands into your lap, claws digging deep into your thighs.

“Do you think,” you hiss, “that I’m somehow oblivious to this fact?”

Kanaya’s shoes make a soft tapping sound against the floor as she moves closer.

“No. But I think you’d like to be.”

The lump in your throat expands until you can’t speak, can hardly breathe. You push up your glasses and pinch the bridge of your nose.

“What am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can do anything to help them. What good is it sitting around in front of the T.V. watching them kill each other?”

Kanaya sets a hand on the back of your swivel chair and turns it to face her.

“That’s not what I’m suggesting.”

“Then what are you suggesting?”

The determination in her face wavers. She presses her dark-painted lips together, drops her eyes from yours.

“You could talk to me about it.”

You shake your head.

“What’s to talk about?”

You realize too late that her eyes are misting over.

“I don’t know,” she says, barely a wobble in her voice. “Something. Anything. Anything other than holing up alone and pretending that horrible things aren’t happening to people we love.”

You swallow down hard on the lump still lodged in your throat.

“I…can’t.”

Kanaya straightens, abruptly wiping at her eyes.

“Fine. Hide, then,” she says, her voice shaking as she turns away.

“Kanaya.”

She stops, but doesn’t look at you.

You take a deep breath and reach for her hand. It’s cool in your grasp.

“You’re always so busy worrying about what other people need that sometimes I think you forget about yourself.” The words come out rushed, inelegant, but you press on. “If you need something, just…just ask.”

Kanaya is perfectly still for a moment. Then she squeezes your palm, lifting her other hand to cover her face.

“I just need someone who understands.”

You stand up and put your arms around her.

**Karkat: Be the Knight in Shining Armor**

You’ve been weaving your way through the industrial district, camping in a different warehouse each night and making sure to eliminate all traces of your presence at your vacated locations. You’ve plucked up the few weeds you’ve found growing through the concrete and chewed them to try to stave off your hunger pains, but they’ve done nothing to alleviate the deep throbbing in your head and the dizzy spells that make you stumble. Your warehouse last night had a functional air conditioning unit leaking condensation, which you slurped down with an embarrassing lack of hesitation, but you need more water soon if you’re going to survive.

So far, you haven’t run into anyone else, and you guess you’ve been lucky to avoid detection for this long, especially considering the metaphorical target painted (metaphorically) on your head. In a sick way, you’re almost desperate for a fight, itching to actually _do_ something besides run. Your mind is starting to skitter into the dark, anxious corners it used to retreat to when you would have to hide from the villagers for days and days and days, always by yourself in some chilly, dark space no troll would willingly crawl into unless forced by dire necessity. For as much as you are used to the knowledge of your aloneness, you have never known how to cope with the loneliness.

You’ve been keeping a careful tally of the dead. Last night, they’d announced Caelan Rohese and Atasha Ivonet. You’d sincerely hoped to hear some of the higher ranking tributes’ names (Teluca Fiaatt springs to mind), but the universe has always liked spitting on your hopes and dreams, even ones as simple as wishing fellow tributes dead before you have to kill them yourself.

Or, you know, before they kill you. Details.

You’ve reached the end of warehouses in the block, so you’ve made up your mind to try to make it to the lighthouse. If no one else has claimed it yet, the higher ground would be one hell of an advantage.

It’s not terribly far to the beach from the end of the industrial district, but the lack of cover puts you on edge. You duck behind rocks when you find them and take a moment to assess your surroundings every time you pause.

Just as you’re about to move forward from one of your hiding spaces, you catch sight of a lone figure running full-tilt up the beach. You duck back down behind the rock, but risk another glance a few moments later to see if the figure has changed directions.

It hasn’t. It’s moving straight toward you.

 _Fuck_.

As the figure gets closer, you recognize her downward-curving horns and wavy shoulder-length hair. Gamzee’s District partner, Morien.

There are three people chasing her, and your heart sinks at the realization that you recognize at least one of them.

Morien passes between two large rocks a little ways ahead of you, flinging a look over her shoulder.

You see the trap before she does, the late-afternoon sun gleaming for just a second off the net of fishing line strung between the rocks, but there’s no time to warn her before she runs straight into the troll-made spider web. You watch her flail against the invisible strings as her momentum whips them around her, but her limbs are already tangled, and the more she struggles, the more hopelessly twisted in the net she becomes.

The three pursuing trolls catch up to her, Teluca leading the way. The girl directly behind her is enormously tall and athletically built, her horns curved forward over the top of her head, angled perfectly to impale someone in a charge. Your stomach churns when you notice the sledgehammer in her hand. The boy bringing up the rear is also well-built, but the way he hangs back and eyes Teluca makes you doubt he’s much of a fighter.

Teluca leans down and yanks the net closed, trapping Morien entirely. Morien growls, but you know it’s a sound of desperation; the net is so tight she can scarcely move.

“Not a bad trap, Kaydhe,” Teluca tells the boy in her dreamy voice. “Clever for a rustblood, anyway.”

She pulls a knife from her belt, waving it in front of Morien’s face.

“So, little gutterblood,” she croons. “Shall I kill you quickly, or slowly?”

“Fiaatt,” the other girl says. “Cut the net. Let her fight. There is no honor this way.”

Teluca doesn’t even look up.

“What honor does a gutterblood deserve in death?”

Kaydhe flinches. The other girl puts one of her massive hands on his shoulder.

“I will not allow this,” she says.

“Bedisa, don’t,” Kaydhe hisses, tugging at her arm. He might as well be pulling at a tree trunk for all the good it does.

Teluca stands up, her motions slow and fluid, like honey dripping from a spoon. She turns to face Bedisa.

“You wouldn’t be planning to challenge me, would you?” she asks. Then she motions at Kaydhe. “Surely not, with your diamond crush standing in such close stabbing range.”

“You would be dead before the knife fell,” Bedisa says through her teeth.

 _‘They’re distracted. You should do something_ ,’ whispers your knightly side.

 _‘Fuck them. Let it play out and hopefully it’ll just end in a few less people for you to kill later,’_ whispers your survival instinct.

You watch Morien struggling in the net, the unforgiving fishing line beginning to cut into her skin.

Your knightly side wins.

You comb your fingers through the sand until you find a jagged piece of rock, then creep forward from your hiding place. Morien’s eyes widen when she sees you, but she doesn’t make a sound.

You’ve sawed through all of three strings when Kaydhe sounds the alarm.

You wrench your makeshift blade through as much of the net as you can before Teluca is on you, snarling through her grin. You drop the rock. As you’re thrown to the ground, you see Morien work an arm free of the net, fingers stretching across the sand. You swipe a foot, kicking the rock and a spray of sand in her direction, before Teluca lunges for you again, forcing you to roll to the side. You find your feet, but you feel clumsy and off-balance in the uneven sand.

“This is too perfect,” Teluca says. She flips a second knife up from her belt so that she holds one in each hand. “I didn’t even have to look for you. You came to me, and unarmed, no less.”

You show her all your teeth in a grin that you hope resembles Terezi’s.

“Who’s unarmed? I am the weapon. It’s me.”

It’s a totally cheesy line, but hey, you needed something to say.

“There are three of us, small one,” says Bedisa, not unkindly. “Are you certain you wish to engage in combat?”

You angle yourself so that you’re standing between them and Morien.

“You might give me an option,” you tell Bedisa. Then you incline your head toward Teluca. “But she won’t. So yeah, consider combat mode engaged.”

Teluca leaps for you with the last syllable still hanging in your mouth. You dodge, but not before one of her knives leaves a long gash in the arm you’d thrown up to protect your face. You spit curses because vile words somehow ease the sting, and you’re still swearing when you have to practically do a backflip to avoid getting hit with Bedisa’s sledgehammer. The only bright side is that Kaydhe doesn’t seem terribly interested in joining the fight. Not exactly an advantage, but you’d rather fight two people than three. You’ll take what you can get.

And what you really wish you could get is _away from motherfucking Teluca_. For someone with the half-lidded stare of the highly medicated, she’s quick on her feet and she won’t let you out of range, keeping pace with you as you try to dodge away from her. You’re too afraid to even throw a punch at her for fear that she’ll sever a tendon in your arm. At least when you fought her before, you had a sickle. You were also well-fed and as close to well-rested as you really get. As things stand now, you’re hungry, tired, and dehydrated, tripping over your own feet on the uneven sand, and Teluca is slicing you to holy hell because of it.

You sense movement in your peripheral vision, and you turn your head just in time to see Bedisa swing at you again, way too close for comfort. You leap toward the water, but not fast enough to avoid the sledgehammer entirely. It glances off your upper arm, and glance or no, the force ripples through your arm and into your side, wrenching your shoulder joint in a direction it wasn’t intended to go. Things pop. You stumble and drop to your knees, hissing in pain.

“Motherfucking son of a whore-mongering cuntrag!”

Teluca’s running at you, grinning. You get a fistful of sand in the hand that isn’t throbbing with pain and fling it in her eyes. She hisses, pulling up short, and you scramble to your feet only to fall down again courtesy of the solid punch to the back that knocks the breath out of you. So much for Kaydhe not joining the fight. You twist around and sink your sharpened teeth into his ankle. He yelps with surprise, and you let go lest you become a sitting duck for Bedisa’s hammer or Teluca’s knives, pushing yourself upright again. You take a few stumbling paces back and nearly trip over Morien, still struggling her way out of the net.

You duck a swing of Bedisa’s hammer and grab up a rock out of the sand. It’s not much, but you’ll take any sort of weapon at this point.

You doubt you can throw fast enough to hit Teluca, and Bedisa’s skull could probably withstand a brick wall falling on it, so you throw the rock at Kaydhe’s head as hard as you can. It strikes him right between the eyes, drawing blood, and he goes down, knocked unconscious, but most likely not dead. Still, it’s enough to distract Bedisa, who stops swinging at you in favor of kneeling by Kaydhe’s side to check the wound.

You register movement as a blur of hair and manage to rotate just in time to take a knife to the shoulder instead of the bloodpusher. You scream all the same. The knife punctures so deep that it goes with you instead of Teluca when you stagger back, the blood-slick handle slipping out of her grasp. You suppose you should be grateful for two things: one, the stab wound is in your already-injured arm, and two, now you have a real weapon if you can just bring yourself to rip the damn thing out. Somehow, the prospect isn’t appealing.

It becomes more appealing as Teluca’s other knife comes flying at you.

You wrench the blade out of your arm, spitting as many curse words as you can fit into a sentence (which is a lot). The knife shakes in your hand, but it still makes Teluca pull up short, her snarl distorting the scar you left across her mouth.

“Do you really want to take me on, little boy?” she hisses. “You can barely stand. Why not just make it easier on yourself and accept your inevitable death? I’ll kill you quicker if you stop resisting.”

“No thanks,” you wheeze. “I’ll take my chances.”

Much to your dismay, Bedisa is getting back up and striding to Teluca’s side. But she doesn’t move in to attack you, instead taking Teluca’s wiry bicep in one massive hand.

“I suggest we retreat to base. Kaydhe is in need of medical supplies.”

Teluca doesn’t take her eyes off you.

“Cut your losses. He was useless to begin with, and he’s twice as useless now. I’m not retreating.”

Bedisa lets go of her arm, frowning.

“If you wish me to cut my losses, then I will do just that, starting with our alliance. I will take Kaydhe, and you may continue on by yourself. Best of luck to you, Fiaatt, and to you, Vantas.”

You gape a little as she turns away without killing either of you. You guess she doesn’t think that would be honorable.

Out of the corner of your eye, you see Morien finally wriggle free of the net and sprint up the beach in the opposite direction. Mission accomplished, you guess.

There’s a horrible wet sound, then a spray of brown blood, and you watch as Teluca casually pulls her knife out of the side of Bedisa’s throat.

“Consider our alliance ended, then,” Teluca says in her dreamy voice.

The canon drowns out the sound of Bedisa’s body hitting the sand.

Teluca grins at you.

“So, little mutant. Where were we?”

You take a stumbling step back, your legs shaking, and that’s when the douchebags controlling your environment decide it’s time for the tide to come in.

It’s not like the high tides you watched at Gamzee’s hive, where the waves crept slowly higher and higher up the beach. Instead, the water swells and lurches forward all at once, rolling itself into a wave that grows to an alarming height and keeps growing the closer it gets to shore. For just a moment, you and Teluca both stop to stare up at the wall of water towering overhead, frozen by the shared knowledge that no amount of speed would get either of you out of the way fast enough.

You suck in a breath and brace.

The impact knocks the air out of your lungs, first crushing you into the ground, then dragging you along it before a current catches under your foot and pulls you legs-over-head into the most horrific weightlessness you’ve ever experienced. There’s no up and no down, no sense of place or time. There is only endless pressure in your chest and eyes and nose and head, and the rushing noise pounding in your ears, and the violent twisting of your body as it tumbles in the currents. You would scream if you had any breath with which to do so.

You hear the canon even underwater, the bass boom resonating through the fierceness of the current. Vaguely, you wonder if it’s for you, sure you must have drowned by now, but no, you realize, it must be for Kaydhe, who you knocked unconscious, who probably sucked in a lungful of water as soon as the wave hit, well done, Karkat, add another kill-notch to your belt (you’re getting hysterical, the lack of oxygen is doing things to your mind, you’re going to die).

And then your head breaks the surface of the water and you suck in air and somehow you are not dead. You kick your legs and use your one mobile arm to drag yourself to the shore on a forward swell. When you hit the beach and crawl out of the water’s grip, you can still feel the current.

The last thing you think before you black out is that you really hope Teluca is dead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all for now, folks! Update two is mostly complete but pre-beta'd, so hopefully I'll have that up soonish.
> 
> Also, I just wanted to say that if I haven't responded to your questions/comment, please know that it's not because I don't care! My mental health has just been so poor lately that any type of interaction, even online, is extremely difficult for me. Hugs to everyone who takes the time to drop a question or a comment in my inbox. It really does mean a lot. :) Cheers, and a Happy New Year to you all!


	2. Chapter Two

**Kankri: Fend off Feelings**

You blink at the television screen as the Games footage finishes for the evening. You’re not quite sure when you laid your head on Porrim’s shoulder, or how long she’s been running her fingers through your hair. It’s terribly intimate. You’ll ask her to take her hands off you just as soon as you can find your voice again.

You’re not really sure when that’s going to be.

“Kanny?”

You don’t respond.

“Are you alright?”

You swallow, trying to clear some of the dryness from your throat.

“Yes,” you say, and you sound whispery and pathetic. You try again. “Yes. I’m fine. Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary.”

“You’re letting me touch you,” Porrim points out. “That generally doesn’t bode well for your state of mind.”

“I’m fine,” you say again. “Just…just very tired.”

“Would you like me to leave so you can take a nap?”

You shake your head.

“Should I call Dirk?”

You twitch. You’ve barely spoken to Mr. Strider since you shouted at him the morning of the Games, too embarrassed by your conduct to get more than a few sentences out. And, you’ll admit, you still feel you had a valid point to make. He’d just looked so hurt.

“No.”

Porrim lifts your head off her shoulder to cup your face.

“Kanny, what’s wrong? Is it the Games? Is it whatever this fight is with Dirk? Neither? Both?”

You pry her hands off your face and fold your legs up under you, turning to face her on the couch, though you can’t make eye contact.

“Both, I suppose.”

“Would you like to talk about it?”

You study your knees.

“Not really, no.”

“Oh, dear. You really _are_ unwell.”

You scowl.

“It’s just,” you begin, and then stop. You rub your aching temples. “The thing is. If I talk to you about what’s bothering me—especially in light of—the way we were just—well, it’s just a bit…” You detach your mind from your mouth. “I would feel as though I were engaging in unwarranted pale flirtation which might be perceived as coy, considering my lack of interest in pursuing any real quadrant affiliations.”

Porrim sighs.

“You know that two friends can talk about their feelings without things leaning toward a quadrant, don’t you?”

“Yes, but we have…baggage.”

“If by baggage you mean a deep and longstanding friendship, then yes, we have baggage.”

You make an irritated sound, one of the more animalistic noises you’ve tried to train yourself out of.

“Please don’t deliberately obfuscate the point. You’ve made pale overtures toward me on more than one occasion, and you know that I don’t have any intention of reciprocity.”

She looks momentarily stung, then angry.

“Ah, well, thank you so much for clarifying the way I feel about you. I had no idea. Truly, your ability to see into my mind is astounding.”

You press the heels of your hands against your eyes.

“Porrim—”

“Heaven forbid someone might have feelings for you. The tragedy is all yours.”

You drop your hands to your sides and give her a desperate look.

“Do you think I just casually brush you off? Do you think it doesn’t eat away at me? I don’t know what to do with affection, yours or anyone else’s. God knows being Cronus’s pretend-matesprit made my head spin, and now there’s this thing with Dirk—”

“Wait. What thing with Dirk?”

She’s looking at you with wary, narrowed eyes, mother-cat-guarding-cubs. You’ve seen that look on her before, usually any time Cronus walks into a room. You regret saying anything.

“Nothing. It was trivial. Forget I mentioned it.”

“Did he do something to you?” Porrim asks.

“No. Well, yes, but nothing—good god, Porrim, please stop looking at me like that, it’s nothing worth hacking the man to pieces with your chainsaw.”

Porrim takes a few deep breaths.

“Alright. Then what happened?”

You feel color rising to your cheeks and can’t meet her eyes.

“He kissed me. A few days before the Games. And confessed he had flushed feelings for me. And we haven’t talked about it since, and I honestly think he thinks I don’t remember because I might have been just the tiniest bit drunk at the time.”

When you chance a glance up, Porrim is staring at you, her face a combination of amusement and surprise.

“Well, that’s…not actually all that unexpected, now that I really think about it. I think I’m more surprised by the fact that you were drunk.”

Your face gets even warmer.

“Oh…quiet, you.”

Porrim smiles, but it fades quickly, replaced by a look of worry.

“Are we okay?”

You take a deep breath and surprise yourself by reaching for her hand.

“Yes. We’re okay.”

             

**Terezi: Make a 8reak for It**

You’re starting to get tired, and you’re starting to worry about Tavros.

He’s been acting odd for a while now, on unusually agreeable terms with Vriska. He follows most of her stupid demands, shares his food with her, lets her sit with her arm draped around his shoulders.

You wonder if they’re forming an alliance behind your back. You feel shallow and paranoid. But you can’t be too careful out here, and Vriska is manipulative. She and Tavros would actually make a pretty formidable team.

You begin plotting how to sneak away from them as you flit from abandoned storefront to abandoned storefront. But then you’ll be completely alone. The thought frightens you more than you’d like to admit.

You wonder where Karkat is.

Your runaway plans are rudely interrupted by someone leaping on your back. Startled, you shriek loud enough to raise a legion of the dead. There’s something sharp hooked around your throat. Distantly, you recognize it as the curved blade of a sickle. You shut your eyes and wait for death.

Instead, you’re jerked back against a girl’s chest, the blade pressing just tight enough against your windpipe to make you fear taking too deep a breath.

“Nobody move, or your little friend paints my blade teal,” says the girl.  A few steps ahead of you, Tavros and Vriska pull up short. Out of the corner of your eye, you see Vidahl move out of a shadowed corner.

“You again,” Vriska scoffs. “How come you keep hooking up with crazy broads, huh?”

“This from you, Serket?” says the girl behind you. “I read up on you, you know.”

“Pff. Read up on me? Where?”

“Internet. I’m a great researcher.”

“Nice for you. And your research told you I’m crazy?”

“Something like that.”

“Itonis,” Vidahl sighs. “Shut up or I’ll take care of you like I took care of Atasha.”

“Spoilsport.”

Vidahl holds out his hands to Tavros and Vriska. “Surrender your weapons and food, and the tealblood lives.”

You surprise yourself by cackling. It goes on for a long time, long enough to have Tavros, Vriska, and Vidahl staring at you. But you can’t stop.

“Really?” you wheeze between mad bursts of laughter. “ _Really_? You’re seriously going to try to make them think you’ll let any of us live once you have our weapons? They’re not as dumb as they look!”

“Um. Thank you?”

“Fine, then,” says Itonis. “We’ll just kill you and take them on ourselves.”

“I don’t think you really want a fair fight, though,” Vriska says. “Because I’m craaaaaaaazy, right?”

Vidahl shifts from foot to foot, looking uncomfortable.

“Do we have a deal or not?”

“Hmm,” says Vriska. “Nah, think we’ll keep our food and stuff. Terezi’s a big girl. She can take care of herself.”

You would be touched by Vriska’s estimation of your skills if not for _the fucking sickle at your throat_.

“I notice you’re not leaving her,” Vidahl points out.

“I notice you’re not killing her.”

“Oh, by all means, Vriska, bait them!” you call, your voice loud with forced cheer. “I always wanted to die during one of your pissing contests!”

“Shut it, princess,” Vriska says. “I’m trying to save the damn day.”

Her eyes glaze over, unfocused. It’s a look you’ve seen many times before. You just never expected to see it here.

The arm holding you goes slack. You take advantage of the moment and shove Itonis away from you, planning to run.

But there’s no need. Itonis and Vidahl are just standing there, their faces gone hazy and slack-jawed.

Vriska’s smile is just a little too bright.

Tavros is giving her the uneasy look of a troll who’s just coming to the realization that he’s the punchline of a bad joke.

“You still have your powers,” you say.

“Oh, god,” says Tavros, going pale.

“Dish later, chickadees,” Vriska chirps. “Your lord and savior needs to concentrate.”

You inch a little further away from Itonis without getting any closer to Vriska. You catch Tavros’s eye while questions swarm into your head. How did she pull this off? Has she been manipulating Tavros? Is that why they’ve been so friendly? Would she really go that far? And _how did she pull this off?!_

Itonis lifts her sickle arm and swings the blade across Vidahl’s throat with so much force it nearly takes his head off, spraying her with olive blood. She repeats the motion on her own throat, muddying the color on the blade before she drops in a heap of gangly limbs.

For a numb second, you do nothing. Then your feet move toward Itonis’s body on autopilot. You don’t need to check and see if she’s dead. A troll doesn’t survive a throat gash like that. You drop into a crouch and pluck the bloodied sickle out of her hand, wiping it on your pants.

When you straighten up again and turn to face Vriska, she tosses her hair and makes an impatient noise.

“Quit with the shell shock and just ask already.”

You flatten your mouth into a thin line.

“Okay, Vriska. How is it you still have your powers?”

Vriska grins.

“The great thing about a power like mine is that all you have to do is trick the lab tech into thinking he already put the chip in your brain, then add a little cut for effect.”

She looks entirely too pleased at her own cleverness and clearly expects you to be impressed, too. She huffs when your only reaction is to keep staring at her, lips pressed tight.

“What?”

“You’re a liability.”

“Wow, this after I save your life? That’s gratitude for you!”

“Don’t start. Just. Don’t even start with your martyr shit. Do you know how much danger you just put all of us in with a stunt like that? They could drop a missile on you out of fucking nowhere for this and it would probably kill all of us!”

Vriska rolls her eyes, then turns her face skyward and waves her arms.

“Hey! Hey, you out there! You wanna blow me up?”

“Um,” Tavros mutters, “this would be the, ironic, moment when the, missile comes in, and blows you up.”

“Ha. Ha ha ha. Pupa thinks he’s a comedian now!”

You’re inching away from her. You kind of wish you were in grabbing range of Tavros so you could move him away from her, too.

“Stop it,” you hiss. “I mean it, Vriska. Just stop it. It’s not cute. ”

Vriska grins, a little wild, a little too broad. She’s upset and trying not to let you see, because heaven forbid the world should know Vriska Serket can be hurt.

“Wow, some way to thank the girl who just saved your sorry ass!”

“You might have just fucked us all over!”

“Stop backing away from me! If they were going to blow me up, they would have done it already!”

“Tavros,” you say, your voice firm, “you don’t have to stay with her. If you want to come with me, you’re welcome to.”

“Fuck you,” Vriska spits. “Tavros, don’t you fucking dare go with her.”

Tavros’s thick brows draw together with concern.

“I. Um.”

“Um, um, um!” Vriska snaps. “Is that all you know how to say? God, you weak, stupid _wiggler_ , why do I keep helping you out?!”

A flicker of… _something_ crosses Tavros’s face. You’re not sure you’ve ever seen it there before. It’s vaguely recognizable as anger.

“You didn’t, help me out, when you made me jump off a cliff.”

Vriska splutters.

“What the hell? We’ve been over this! How many times do I have to say I’m sorry--”

“That’s the thing, though,” you interject, risking a step toward her again. “You never really say you’re sorry. You pull all this fake ‘woe is me I’m the worst, bluh bluh everyone hates poor Vriska’ crap, and then you act like some insincere, passive-aggressive formation of the word ‘sorry’ should automatically absolve you of all guilt.”

Vriska is mad enough to stamp her foot. She stamps her foot, and it reminds you that you are six sweeps old.

“Why are you two ganging up on me? We’re supposed to be allies!”

“Allies don’t lie about things like this, Vriska.”

“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t say anything about it until now.”

“Considering, um, our circumstances, it still feels, close enough to lying.”

“Shut up, Tavros!”

“Maybe, I don’t want to.”

“Maybe I’ll _make_ you.”

In Vriska’s moment of distraction, you snatch the collapsible lance out of her supply bag and slap it into Tavros’s hand. He and Vriska both look surprised by this development. You clap Tavros on the shoulder and start moving away, nudging him along.

“Come on, chocolate pudding,” you say. “We can do better than her.”

“You can do better than me?” Vriska echoes, her voice oddly quiet. “Is that really what you think? That you can do better than _me_?”

You roll your eyes at her and keep pushing Tavros along.

“Don’t start on one of your grandiose, ‘I am Vriska and I am the best!’ speeches. We’re not in the mood.”

You turn your back.

“We were a team!” Vriska shrieks, harsh enough that her voice breaks. “Scourge Sisters against the world! You can’t do better than me!”

You whirl on her, scowling.

“When we were a team, all we did was hurt people. I don’t want to be a part of a team like that.”

“You need me,” Vriska says. “I make you stronger--you know I do, I’m better for you--I’m better for you than _him_!”

“What? Tavros?”

“Gamzee!”

You pause while your thinkpan scrambles to readjust.

“But Gamzee’s my--”

“I know,” Vriska hisses. “He’s your awful fucking kismesis, and he sucks at it!”

“How did we even end up on this topic?”

Vriska’s face honestly makes you ache for a moment for the pieces of your childhood you can never get back.

“You can’t just leave me again,” she says. “I’ve always had your back.”

“You blinded me!”

“But you liked it better that way! You said so. Besides, I push you! I made you who you are! You’re stronger because of _me_ , so how could you choose him instead?!”

It hurts you more than you’d care to admit that she’s starting to well up with angry tears. You make yourself clench your jaw. This isn’t the time or place.

“I chose him because I found him loathsome. No more, no less. I didn’t do it to spite you, whatever you may think.”

Vriska’s upper lip curls up into a snarl, displaying her viper-fangs.

“What, so I’m not good enough for you to hate?”

Before you can answer, Tavros pipes up.

“Um. I think, maybe, this is not, the most ideal moment, for this fight.”

“Stay out of it, pupa,” Vriska snaps. “It’s a great moment for this fight. The audience wants a show, right? Lots of nice quadrant drama-bombs falling out of the sky? Well, here’s your fucking drama, assholes! Shit’s turning into a fucking soap opera in here!”

Tavros tugs at your arm.

“Terezi, I, um, think we should go.”

You nod your agreement and start to move away again. Vriska’s arm lashes out and snatches hold of Tavros’s wrist, dragging him back toward her.

“No!” she says, and she’s practically screaming, having something akin to a temper tantrum but much, much more frightening. “You’re staying with me! You both have to stay! I can make you!”

“You can’t make me,” you tell her, your voice flat, unamused. Tavros tries to shake his arm free, but she grips it tighter, claws digging into his jacket sleeve.

“I can make him,” she snarls. “And you’ll have to stay to keep him safe, won’t you, Little Miss Justice?”

Your eyes narrow. Again, however, Tavros beats you to it before you can speak.

“I don’t. Um. I don’t want to stay, with you anymore.”

“If I have to tell you to shut up one more time--”

Tavros cuts her off by wrenching his arm free of her grasp. The fabric of his jacket sleeve tears in her claws, but he ignores it, stepping back from her and hoisting the lance. Your heart swells with pride for how remarkably badass it is.

“I’m tired of you, telling me to shut up,” Tavros says. The lance points unwaveringly at Vriska’s chest. “And, I’m tired of you, telling me I’m weak, and, saying, how I owe you all these favors, when in reality, all you’ve ever done was be, really awful to me, and everyone else. And, I don’t think, you should keep getting rewarded, for that. So Terezi and I, are going to go. And if you try to do something, to hurt us, I’ll stop you.”

You pride yourself on your ability to figure out what’s going on in peoples’ heads. And right now, Vriska’s mind is like a pulled rubber band, stretching and stretching and finally going _snap._

You know the recoil is going to hit someone in the face seconds before it happens.

“You’ll stop me?” she echoes.

You can see Tavros’s confidence waver in time with the slight faltering of his grip on the lance.

“Um. Yes.”

“Tavros--” you begin.

“You’ll stop me, pupa?” Vriska asks, her voice gone sing-song. “How will you stop me?”

“Tavros, get away from her.”

But Tavros stands frozen, uncertain, just long enough for Vriska to lunge. In mere seconds, she’s wrestled the lance out of his hands, laughing.

“Give that back!” Tavros demands, brown through the cheeks. You pull at the back of his jacket.

“Leave it, fudgesicle, come on, let’s go!”

Vriska spins the lance in the air like a baton.

“If you want it, come and get it,” she taunts. “Or is de poor liddle pupa too scarwed?”

You forget how strong Tavros is through the upper body, how sweeps of wheeling himself around in that chair built his arms and torso into a near-unstoppable force. He runs at her and pulls out of your grip like a truck breaking free of a piece of dental floss.

He runs at her, and she drives the lance straight through his powerful chest.

 

**Karkat: Make a Friend**

You feel like someone has scraped the insides of your eyelids with sandpaper. Opening them is a struggle. So is moving anything at all; you are one big ache. And also one big sting. Jesus, that Teluca girl is mean with knives.

You realize after a blank moment of staring at the tin ceiling that you are not where you passed out, and the boom of the death toll cannon woke you.

But more importantly, _you are not where you passed out_.

You try to sit up, but all you manage to do is get your back a few inches off the floor and make a pitiful sound. Someone puts their hands on your shoulders and pushes you back down onto the…sleeping bag, you realize, not a bare floor. You look down at your chest and see yourself swaddled in a mass of bandages, your bad arm resting in a sling.

Finally, you look up.

A small boy with curly hair and equally curly horns peers down at you with the most genuine concern you think you’ve ever seen on anyone not in your immediate circle of friends.

“Don’t try to sit up just yet, okay?” says Mimett, the boy of vaguely mouth-breatherish triva. “At least, not without help.”

You try to sit up anyway because you are you (‘ _stubborn, stubborn is the word you want, KK_ ,’ says Sollux in your head, mangling the sibilants). Mimett just sighs and helps you, easing you back to sit slumped against the wall of what appears to be another warehouse. Cover is good. You like cover.

You do _not_ like being an invalid in someone else’s care.

“Here,” Mimett says, holding a bottle of water under your nose. “Drink. Staying hydrated is important, especially while you’re recovering.”

It could be drugged, you think. But you haven’t had water in nearly three days and it’s hard to worry about whatever poison it might be spiked with when it’s right there taunting you.

As if reading your mind, Mimett says, “It’s okay, I promise. The only thing in it is some iodine drops.”

You shouldn’t trust him. You know better than to trust people.

With your good arm, you snatch the water bottle out of his hand and chug it until it’s almost empty. You force yourself to stop and give Mimett a vaguely guilty look.

“Shit.” Your voice is dry and brittle. “Was this all you had?”

Mimett smiles, looking as close to smug as you think he really gets. He shakes his head.

“I got lucky. Look.”

You track him as he stands up and walks a few feet to the left. There’s a chemical rinse built into the wall and a drain in the floor. Mimett turns a handle, and water pours out of the spout. He shuts it off again, almost grinning at you.

“I didn’t think it would actually be functional,” he says. “And of course I figured it might be poisoned, but I poured some on one of those weeds over there and they didn’t wilt or anything, so I just started adding the iodine and I’ve been holed up here drinking it for a few days now and it’s been fine.”

“Fuck,” you say. “Yeah. Lucky. It’s you. Serket would be jealous.”

“Vriska Serket from District Three?”

“That’s the one.”

“She’s…kind of scary.”

“Learn this now, kid,” you say, shifting your weight and wincing as everything aches. “All girls are scary. Don’t underestimate them.”

“Noted.”

You look down at your bandages again and swig some more water to try to dislodge the lump in your throat.

“So,” you say at last. “Did you patch me up?”

Mimett nods. He drags a pack and a second sleeping bag next to you, makes a nest in the folds of cloth. He looks as exhausted as you feel. You think one of the cruelest constructs of the Games is the lack of sopor.

“Uh. Okay, because I’m an awful shit-stain who sucks at saying simple things like ‘thank you,’ instead I’ll ask why in the love of the fuck would you go to the trouble?”

Mimett cocks his head to one side.

“Well…I thought you were dying.”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the point of this whole exercise.”

Mimett shakes his head, the stupid nice guy. You hate legitimately kind people (okay, not Kanaya. But at least Kanaya is sassy). It’s why you’ve never quite known what to do with Tavros.

“I know it was probably dumb,” Mimett says. “But I’m glad I was the one who found you, and no matter what you say, I’m glad I could help you.”

“Jesus. You’re making my teeth rot, you know that? Again: why?”

“Because,” Mimett says, his tone almost defiant. “If you die in here, at least you can die knowing that some people still believe in being fair.”

Your throat seizes closed for some reason. You can’t even say the word ‘fair’ without it coming out bitter. You try to tap into your boundless supply of furious witticism and find that you are empty.

Mimett reaches toward your face. You jerk back from the touch on instinct, but all he does is lay his hand on your forehead. He says nothing about your reaction, thank fuck.

“I think your fever’s breaking,” he comments. “Man, that stuff your backers sent you is great.”

You blink.

“What stuff?”

“Oh! I forgot to mention!” Mimett scrabbles through his pack and produces a small vial of clear liquid with an eyedropper stoppering the top. “It came through on one of the little parachutes yesterday.”

He gestures over his shoulder, where you can see the discarded parachute in royal fuchsia adorned with the Empress’s sigil. You want to roll your eyes; of fucking course they’d send backers’ gifts into the game floating down under the damn imperial flag.

Mimett is still talking. You force yourself to pay attention.

“You’ve had a really bad infection and I was having trouble getting your fever down. But then this stuff came in and it’s…” he looks at the vial with a mixture of happiness and longing. “Real medicine. The good stuff.” He sets the vial aside, some deep sadness flickering across his gaze before he averts it. “I’ve never been able to get my hands on anything that good.”

You look at him for a long time in silence. The rasp of your voice makes you sound callous when you ask, “Who was it?”

Mimett blinks at you. “I’m sorry?”

You clear your throat, trying to soften your tone. You really suck at it.

“Somebody died, didn’t they? Someone close to you.”

Mimett swallows, knotting his fingers across his knee.

“My neighbor back home was always really nice to me,” he says, his voice faltering a little. “She was a few sweeps older, and she kind of protected me from some of the bullies in the neighborhood. She used to tease me that she only did it because she was a little pale on me.” His cheeks flush yellow. “I guess…I guess I maybe felt that way about her. I don’t know. Probably just a crush, but I liked her a lot.”

You shift on your sleeping bag, trying to ease some of the all-over pain.

“So what happened?”

Mimett’s eyebrows bunch together.

“She had a very pretty matesprit who was also nice. So nice that she always stopped to give people directions if they seemed lost. But I guess…I guess sometimes people pretend to be lost just so they can get close to someone and—” he breaks off, screwing up his face. After a moment, he continues. “They…did some terrible things to her. And when my neighbor found out, she went to challenge them for her matesprit’s honor, because they were higher castes than her and her matesprit and no one was going to do anything.” He shakes his head, blinking away tears, and repeats, much softer, “No one was going to do anything…”

You don’t know how the world hasn’t crushed this boy yet. You don’t know how or why he believes anything might ever be fair (you don’t know why a tiny part of you believes it, too).

“Anyway,” Mimett goes on, “my neighbor fought them, and I guess she won, but she got stabbed in the leg, and it got infected something awful. I could hear her crying at night from the pain, and she’d spent all her money making sure her matesprit got taken care of, so I tried…I tried to get her some medicine.”

You don’t need to hear the end of the story to know its conclusion, but you let him talk anyway.

“But I couldn’t afford much. Just cheap stuff. Watered down. Nothing that could actually help her.” He shakes his head, but the tears are gone. “She didn’t last long. I was there when she…”

His voice trails off into whispery nothingness.

You summon all the energy you can and reach out to touch his knee.

“You tried,” you rasp. “And you stayed with her. She wasn’t alone. I’m sure that meant something to her.”

After a little while, Mimett nods. You don’t ask what happened to the matesprit; you allow yourself the selfish luxury of hoping that she’s somehow alright.

Mimett sighs, then draws himself back up, forcing a smile.

“It’s okay, though,” he says. “This time, I got the right stuff, and I got to help someone with it.”

There’s still pain in his face. It hurts to look at.

“We’ll help each other,” you say. “One good turn deserves another, right?”

This time, his smile comes a little easier.

**Gamzee: Engage Murder Mode**

You find his body before the cranes have a chance to snap it up.

He’s just lying there with a gaping hole in his chest, eyes open, face slack with shock. Brown blood all over him, all over the pavement. There are two other bodies nearby, but you don’t even look at them.

You kneel down and kiss him, close his eyes.

You don’t cry.

You are just…done.

And angry.

Above all other things, you are angry. It’s the anger you’ve always had in you, the boiling, frothing rage that you’ve pressed down with sopor and isolation and Karkat’s little hands stroking your face.

But now you don’t have sopor, or your lonely hive on the beach with no lusus, or Karkat to soothe it all away.

What you have is a dead friend and a cracked mind.

And you just—

—let go.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. Long note is long, and therefore goes at the end where it's easier for folks to skip. ^u^
> 
> It's been a hella long time since my last update, for which I'm quite sorry. Some folks have expressed concern for my well-being, which is very sweet, and I just wanted to let everyone know that I am okay, and I am continuing to get better. I have had several major life events--some good and some bad--occur in the last few months, including getting married (to my beta and queerplatonic partner Ilex!), leaving a masters program that battered what little writing confidence I have, and then deciding to be absolutely crazy and finish said masters program while beginning a second program. I've gotten bad about replying to comments, but just know that I have appreciated every last one. My feels, y'all, you don't even know. :')
> 
> In light of this dual-degree thing I'm doing, updates will still be sparse, but I'm not dropping the project. Apparently, I'm just going to be the George RR Martin of the fic world and take forever between installments. Just bear with me, and thank you all so much for being so utterly awesome.


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. As the Monty Python saying goes, I am not yet dead. A very short little not-much of a chapter, but an update nonetheless, I suppose. More notes at the end, plus tldr. Long author's note is going to be long.

 

**Dave: Face Interrogation**

“What’s going on with you?”

The question startles you out of your spaced-out observation of Games reruns. You look up to see your twin standing at the side of the couch, hands on her hips.

“Oh, yeah, hi to you too sis, nah, it’s cool, no need for pleasantries or anything, just full-on third-degree upfront, always appreciated.”

Rose perches on the cushion beside you, her dark-painted lips pursed with worry.

“Dave. Kindly set aside your flippant persona for five minutes. You, of all people, should be aware that I possess above-average observation skills when it comes to human behavior, and you have been behaving in ways that alarm me.”

“Chill. I’m fine.”

You don’t have to look at her to sense her stillness.

“You’ve been experimenting with your powers,” she says in her Seer voice.

You lean your head back on the couch and shut your eyes behind your shades. You’d honestly been trying not to think about that. But there’s no point denying it now, not with Rose in full Seer of All Your Misdeeds mode.

“Yeah.”

“And?”

You’re quiet for a while. And finally, you tell her the truth.

“I died. Or at least, some version of me did. Obviously this version’s still around, all ‘Hell yeah, I rule the alpha timeline, all other Dave iterations can suck it.’ I don’t know, man. Time shit is weird.”

Rose sits down next to you, a little pinch forming between her brows.

“Your abilities are dangerous. Not just for their potential to alter the alpha timeline, but for the toll they take on your mind.”

“Says the girl who sees a million potential futures. Like that’s not the mother of all mental taxation.”

“Every time you fail to close a time loop, you splinter yourself, and a part of you dies,” Rose says, her voice gone hard. “So you must promise me one of two things.”

You turn to look at her. Rose generally works more in slow, leading verbal mazes to get you where she wants you. For her to jump to an ultimatum is rare.

“I’m listening.”

“Either you stop using your powers to go backwards and continue using them only as you have been.”

“Lame.”

“ _Or_ ,” Rose says, her voice gone to steel. In that moment, she sounds oddly like Bro. “Or you learn to use them properly, and you let me help you.”

You stay quiet for a while and pretend to mull. Like it’s even a choice. You’re all soldiers in this house. The concept of duty runs strong in all of you.

“I’ll learn,” you say, and your voice comes out quieter than you meant it too. You sound afraid. Which is exactly what you are, though you doubt Rose really needs to hear the tone of your voice to know it.

Rose gives a curt little nod, once again so Bro-like it throws you. You guess it shouldn’t; of the two of you, it’s clear which one took most after your biological father.

“Good,” she says. There’s a brief pause as her face softens back into worry, uncertainty. There are few things more endearing than Rose being awkward.

“Dave--”

“Whatever touching, emotional thing you’re about to say, don’t bother. I already know, okay?”

That gets a ghost of her old smile back.

“You always have to have the last word, don’t you?”

“Yep.”

“And yet we so often find that that honor goes to me.”

“Yeah, yeah, better, smarter, faster.”

Rose rolls her eyes and hugs you.

“Do shut up, dearest brother.”

You hug her back and pretend she doesn’t know you mean it just a little bit sincerely.

 

**Sollux: Obtain Quadrant-Mate**

You’re numb. Distantly, you hear Kanaya crying softly to your right, Feferi trying to soothe her.

“Uh..Sol?”

Eridan swims at the edge of your peripheral vision, hovering and awkward like only Eridan can be. Roxy lays one hand on your shoulder, waving him off with the other.

“Give him some space, honey.”

Blurred shapes move around you. Time slows to a crawl, then speeds to a dizzying whip. Neither. Both. At some point, Kanaya stops crying. At some point, you get up and sit by her on Feferi’s pink beanbag pouf. She leans against your side, and you aren’t sure if it’s you or her who’s trembling.

“Did, uh…did you guys know him real well?” Eridan asks after what seems like a lifetime.

Kanaya sniffs. “Fairly well, yes. He was very sweet-natured. Good with animals.”

“Sol?”

“No,” you say, your tongue thick in your mouth. “I didn’t know him that well. But he was close with my moirail. They used to FLARP together. He knew her almost as well as I did.”

that’s it. That’s what sets you off. The realization that another piece of Aradia’s life is gone, snuffed out by the same girl who set her up to die in the first place. A low snarl starts in your chest, grows loud and ragged. You reach for psionics that you can’t find, and that makes the growl snap into a sob. You are helpless to save your friends, helpless with rage and fear and grief. The need to break something is overwhelming.

“Sollux--” Roxy and Kanaya say in the same quiet, placating tone. You push yourself to your feet, away from them. You don’t want to be placated. You start towards the door.  Feferi puts a hand on your arm.

“Sollux, wait--”

You jerk away from her and barely feel bad when she lets out a little gasp. Behind you, you hear Eridan say, “I got this.”

You ignore him. You ignore all of them. You storm into the hallway surrounding the Imperial Compound, blowing past Meenah’s hive. You stop by Cronus’s and stare in through the window. It’s dark. Looks like the creep’s not home.

Good. You need some way to vent your anger. Cronus has a front window.

Your fist goes through the glass like it’s paper. Bits of it stick in your skin and you don’t care. You can’t feel it. You can’t feel anything other than anger.

“Sol.”

You almost don’t recognize the deep, firm voice as belonging to Eridan. Maybe you’ve just never heard him use that tone before. He’s always sounded whiny to you, insecure. You’ve never heard him sound that confidant. Still, you don’t turn around. Instead, you punch Cronus’s window again, smashing another pane of glass out.

“Holy shit, Sol, what the hell?!”

You guess he didn’t realize you’d already punched the window once, because he comes running up and hauls you back. You struggle on impulse, because who is he to be touching you, this arrogant, self-important seadweller boy with the bites on his neck (they should be your marks, you think, strange and faraway)?

Eridan manhandles you around to face him, and you burn, because he’d never be able to wrangle you so easily if you just had your damn psionics. He grabs your arm and holds it up to examine it, roughly plucking out some of the larger pieces of glass digging into your skin. You snarl at him, wordless.

“Shut up,” he spits. “Are you stupid?”

Your other hand moves almost of its own accord to slap him. For a moment, he looks slightly shocked. But then a hard look comes into his eyes, some combination of triumph and resolve.

“Go on,” he says, the words a dare. “Do it again.”

He doesn’t have to tell you twice. You swing back your arm to crack him across the face a second time. He catches your wrist and shoves you back while you’re unbalanced, knocking both of you into the wall. You snap your teeth at him, catch the delicate frill of his earfin, and he yowls and lets go of you.

A second later, you grab him back and flip your positions, slamming him up against the wall. You pin him there with a hand at his throat. He looks up at you, slightly out of breath, pupils blown wide, and then you lean down and put your mouth on his before you can think about it.

He arches up against you and catches your lip between his teeth, a low growl thrumming from his chest into yours. Or maybe it’s you growling. Maybe it’s both of you. You don’t care.

He rakes a hand through your hair and curls his claws around the base of your skull, digging in just hard enough to hurt, but not enough to draw blood. You have no such qualms and tear at his mouth with yours until you taste his blood on your tongue while your hands crawl all over each other.

You end up leaving your own set of bruisey bite marks along his neck. It makes you feel better (you wonder if it makes him feel better).

Finally, you pull back from him, panting. You’re shaking. So is he. But he gives you a crooked smile.

“You need an outlet,” he breathes. “I can be that for you.”

You blink a little at what he’s offering. You narrow your eyes. You don’t want a pity-pitch-fling.

“You’d want that?”

Eridan gives a short, breathy laugh.

“Pretty dense for a genius, aint’cha?” He leans in and kisses you again, almost too gentle to be comfortable. “I wanted you since I first saw your skinny glutes stumble out of the arena. I wanted a survivor what I could call mine.”

You feel at once the urges to blush and to cry and to slap him.

“I never would have taken you for a romantic,” you manage. He looks appropriately affronted.

“I’m romantic as hell! I practically got you swoonin’ pitch for me!”

Some of the intensity of the moment lifts, and with it, your mood feels lighter. You glance to the left of Eridan’s head and wince slightly at the punched-out window.

“I smashed your clonebro’s window,” you say. Eridan snorts.

“Yeah, Captain Obvious, you sure did. Do I gotta be jealous?”

“I don’t hate him in a way that makes me want to suck face with him.”

“Wow. Such poetry. Such lispy, lispy poetry.”

You knock heads with him and immediately regret it as your horns get tangled, your longer set of prongs caught behind his swept-back lightning bolts.

“Ow. Shit--”

“Damn, this ain’t nearly as hot as I was picturin’ it.”

You maneuver your heads the wrong ways to undo your locked horns.

“You’ve been picturing this? For shame, ED.”

“Hey, said I wanted you for a long time, didn’t I?”

“I’m flattered, I guess. No, move your head left--”

“My left or your left?”

“Your left!”

“Well, you don’t gotta be snippy about it!”

“If you’re going to be my kismesis, you’d better get used to snippy remarks.”

The blush that floods Eridan’s face is incredibly satisfying. After a few more seconds of awkward struggling, you get your horns untangled.

“So…kismesis, huh?” he says, trying for casual and coming out sounding constipated. You smirk in an attempt to hide your own blush.

“Why not? You drive me bugfuck nuts and I hate everything you stand for.”

Eridan’s flush deepens, turning his face and fins splotchy purple. He’s about to retort when a wolf-whistle cuts him off. You both jump and turn to see Roxy standing a few feet down the hall.

“Sorry to interrupt your blackflirting, guys,” she says, grinning, “but I thought I heard glass breaking.” Her eyes go to Cronus’s broken window. “And hey, what do you know, I did!”

You flounder for words.

“I did it,” Eridan says. “It was--see, Cro and I have been fightin’ for a while, so--”

“Riiiiiight,” Roxy says. “So that’s why Sollux’s hand looks like a glass porcupine.”

You let out a high, nasal giggle, unable to stop yourself. Eridan turns, if possible, even more eggplant-colored. Roxy rolls her eyes and strides forward to seize your bleeding hand.

“Honestly. You’d better stop it with this self-destructive shit.”

“Says the alcoholic.”

“To the other alcoholic.”

“I’m not!”

“You so are,” Eridan says. You glare at him.

“You’re not helping.”

“Ain’t my job to help! I’m your kismesis.”

Roxy extracts a multi-function pocket knife from her shoulder bag and pries a pair of tweezers loose from it. She begins the tedious process of fishing glass out of your hand.

“Actually,” she says to Eridan, in a voice that’s just slightly too serious to be strictly conversational. “It is your job to help him, in a roundabout sort of way.”

Eridan bristles.

“And what would a human know about it?”

Roxy doesn’t rise to bait, snorting instead.

“Please. I grew up around trolls. I know how your quadrants work. A kismesis is there to push their partner to be better and stronger.”

Eridan puffs out his chest.

“I know that!”

Roxy smiles at him over your shoulder.

“Chill, fish-face. I’m just giving you a hard time. Sollux is my boy, you get me? It is literally my job to watch his back.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe you ain’t the only one capable o’ that.”

You roll your eyes.

“Or you two could let me fight my own battles like a big troll, since I am not actually a helpless fucking wiggler.”

“No shit,” says Eridan at the same time Roxy says, “Lies.”

 

**Karkat: Listen to Seditious Chatter**

The medicine from your backers really is good stuff. You’re back on your feet before nightfall has completely set in, and it’s a good damn thing, because you’re ready to do just about anything other than lie around in this warehouse. Even with Mimett chattering your ear off about the most obscure trivia under the sun, you’re bored and antsy. Every noise from outside has you lurching to cover your new friend’s mouth, hunkering down low under the windows. It scares the poor kid witless every time, but he listens to you when you hiss at him to shut up or bark orders to get down. Stupid brat actually seems to trust you.

It would be so easy to snap his skinny, unsuspecting neck. But you don’t. You are lousy at being a troll, so you don’t.

“We need to move,” you say, watching the artificial sun set beyond the nearby synthetic beach. “We’re sitting quack-beasts in here.”

“It seems like a pretty good hiding place,” Mimett says uncertainly. You scowl at him.

“Every hiding place seems like a good hiding place until someone finds it. Then it’s just a trap.”

“Oh.”

You start packing up your things, still deeply regretting your lack of weapons. You lost the knife Teluca stabbed your arm with when the tide overwhelmed you, and Mimett’s food supplies are starting to run low. At least you’ve had fresh water. Still, the lack of anything to defend yourself with gets to you.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a secret weapons cache, would you?” you ask half-heartedly.

“Um. No. I didn’t get one. Just supplies.”

You sigh. “Figures.” You glance at him sideways. “Do you even know how to use any weapons?”

Mimett shifts from foot to foot. “Not exactly. I know how to make poisons.”

You turn your mumbled swearing on his pack.

“No offense, but I don’t really see how that’ll be of any use to us at the moment.”

“It probably won’t be,” Mimett says. Then he goes on, cautious, “I was actually always inspired by--by your ancestor’s vow of nonviolence.”

You stiffen. “Don’t talk to me about that guy.”

“I just…think it’s admirable.”

“It’s impractical,” you grunt, pulling the strings of the supply pack closed with more force than strictly necessary. “It’s not how our species has functioned. Ever.”

Mimett is quiet for long enough that you think you’ve successfully shut him down. But then he says, “That’s not precisely true.”

There’s something bordering on the seditious in his tone that compels you to stop what you’re doing. You turn to look at him.

“What are you talking about?”

His eyes go wide, then dart around the room.

“I…I shouldn’t. It’s forbidden. I just…I found this archive of obliterated history documents once online and I couldn’t stop reading--”

“Hate to break it to you, kid, but all that shit was probably a hoax.”

“It wasn’t!” The insistence in Mimett’s voice gives you pause.

“And what makes you say that?”

Again, Mimett’s eyes flit from one corner of the room to the other. His hands are trembling. Whatever he believes he’s stumbled across, it must be dangerously anti-government. But then his jaw tightens, and his eyes narrow with determination. For a moment, you see the sort of adult he could one day become.

“I’m staring at the proof right now.”

You open your mouth to ask what the hell he means.

And that’s when the wall behind you explodes.

 

**Dirk: Converse with Daughter**

Your t.v. screen reads “Please stand by. We are experiencing technical difficulties.”

You sigh through your nose. The feed cut out halfway through the little troll boy contradicting Karkat. They’re both probably dead by now.

Predictably, you feel nothing. You’ll probably feel something later. Like the next time you have to see Kankri.

Thinking of Kankri, you rub your temples. To say things have been awkward would be an understatement. He’s barely said two words to you since your fight, which, for Kankri, is one hell of a snub.

You shake yourself to stop your brooding and haul yourself off the couch. The apartment is empty. Roxy whisked Sollux and Kanaya away hours ago for some sort of distracting activity, and Feferi dragged Eridan away for moirail time. Jade and John are working out at the gym, Rose is probably with Kanaya, and Dave is…

You never know where Dave is anymore.

You stretch your back until it pops, then wander into the kitchen to raid Roxy’s liquor supply.

A quiet presence behind you makes you turn. Seems you were wrong about Rose. She arches an eyebrow at you. You arch one in return.

“Taking after Mother, are we?”

“Be nice, Rosie.”

Rose pouts.

“My father didn’t raise me to be nice.”

You allow one corner of your lip to curl up.

“Fair point.”

Rose smirks and saunters into the kitchen (when did your little girl learn to saunter?). To your shock, she pours herself a glass of wine. She shoots you a challenging look, but you don’t stop her. Finally, she sets the bottle aside and leans against the counter, holding the delicate wine stem in her delicate fingers (she’s growing up so stupidly beautiful, and it does inexplicable things to your chest).

“So,” she says, tone light. “What’s driving you to drink, father dearest?”

You barely hide your grimace.

“Never could get ‘Bro’ to catch on with you, could I?”

“Ah, dodging the subject. A fine Strilonde tradition. I’ve noticed Dave, in particular, seems quite fond of it.”

“Where is your brother, anyway?”

Rose gives you a calculating look from under her eyelashes, as if trying to decide whether or not to trust you. You know in theory that teenagers keep secrets from their guardians, but you and Rose have always had an understanding. Or so you thought.

She sips her wine. “Meditating.”

You can’t help but chuckle. “What, you telling me he’s gone all new-age hippie on me?”

“You meditate,” Rose points out.

“No, I focus my energies so that I can be a better fighter. It’s different.”

Rose smirks. “Maybe Dave is doing the same thing.”

You pride yourself on your ability to read people, but perhaps you trained your daughter too well in the art of sidestepping, because you can’t tell whether or not she’s joking.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” you sigh. You unscrew the lid on the bottle of vodka you’re holding and drink straight from it. Nasty, bitter stuff. You’ve never cared much for alcohol, in all honesty. “What’s he really up to?”

Rose arches an eyebrow. “As I told you, he’s meditating.”

“Yeah, but why?”

Rose’s gaze sharpens. She sets her wine glass down on the counter with a sharp _click_.

“We’re soldiers in this household, are we not?”

You almost step back at the change in tone.

“Sure.”

“From the moment we were born, that was the very purpose of our existence. You used our skills as bargaining chips to bring the Condesce to heel and threatened to destroy your very own children should she try to remove us from your tutelage. And we understand that, truly we do. To be useful in this house is the condition for existing.”

Your stomach drops.

“Rose, that’s not--”

“I am not speaking out of resentfulness. I am merely stating a point of view. And more than any of us, Dave has taken that belief to heart.”

You swallow, take a moment to regain your calm.

“What are you getting at with all of this?”

Rose looks right at you. Her voice is deceptively bland when she speaks.

“He’s trying to learn more about his powers because he feels he is useless. And to Dave, that’s the worst sin he could commit.”

Your guts are tying themselves in uncomfortable knots. You don’t want to have this conversation, now or ever.

“What do you want from me?” you ask.

Rose’s eyes stay dead, and her voice stays even.

“Do you love us?”

You stand very still as the edges of your vision crawl with blurry darkness. Your tongue is lead, your lips are frozen.

“I suppose a more accurate question is,” Rose continues in the same blasé tone, “are you capable of loving anything?”

You’re looking at her, right at her, but it’s like you’re not really there. Some other tall blonde guy is holding a bottle of vodka while staring down his daughter in your kitchen. None of it can possibly be real (Roxy, Kankri, Dave, Rose, John, Jade, your world, your whole world and they can never know because that is how the universe takes them away). Some other machine wearing a man’s skin is opening his mouth to answer the question.

“No.”

For the barest sliver of a second, you think you’ve managed to shock her. But the wideness of her eyes is gone in less time than it takes you to blink, her mouth pressing into a firm line. She nods, perfectly controlled.

“I see.”

You honestly don’t know when or how she exits the room. You’re too busy being the statue man, unmoving and unseeing. Only the pounding dizziness in your head tells you that you’ve stopped breathing.

When you finally look up, the apartment is truly empty this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, folks. First off, thanks to all of you still reading and waiting patiently. This fic is not dead, as some of you have fretted (and yes, I do know it's been, like, a year since I last updated). It will, however, continue to come slowly and sporadically. 
> 
> Here's the lowdown: in the last year, I have graduated from a master's program that beat the shit out of my self-esteem, lost one of the most important people in my life (my beta/wife's mother), dealt with a string of dismissive doctors ignoring mounting medical issues, and finally received a diagnosis for said health issues, which, while a huge relief, also comes with some slightly scary fallout and long-term followup. As I write this, I am less than two weeks away from moving halfway across the country to a new job and, hopefully, a better life. I've also written a YA horror novel, which I will be querying soon. Needless to say, there have been just a few things going on.
> 
> All that being said, thank you again for being patient while I pursue this silly little hobby. :) Your comments mean the world to me, even if I don't always reply to them. On another note entirely, shout-out to anyone who might have been at MoMocon a couple weeks ago! It was baby's first con, and I was there with Ilex in full nerd glory. We did two days of Hamsteak costumes. ^_^
> 
> Also, please note: I HAVE NOT FINISHED HOMESTUCK YET. I got as far as Terezi: Remember before I couldn't read on due to too many feelings. So please no spoilers in the comments, 'kay? Thanks!
> 
> Stay tuned, and I'll do my best to keep the updates coming.
> 
> TLDR: Life exploded, things are getting better, I HAVE NOT FINISHED HOMESTUCK NO SPOILERS PLEASE, and I totes love you guys, for serious.


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